Books, 3/30.

Salon's Laura Miller faults the Library of America's collection, American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now - and rightly so - for not running the dates and original venues right along the entries, but even so: "One surprising revelation is that every argument that has ever raged among film lovers - technique vs content, the purely 'cinematic' vs the 'literary,' American vs foreign films, etc. - has been with us from Day One, which in this case is the 1920s. Of course the biggest, oldest and fiercest battle in all quarters of American culture is highbrow vs lowbrow, and film criticism has been the place where those hostilities have raged with the highest of dudgeon."

Spencer Parsons in the Austin Chronicle on Conversations With the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age at the American Film Institute: "George Stevens Jr's excellent collection of master classes with some of old Hollywood's greatest directors, writers, producers, and cinematographers (not to mention guest stars Jean Renoir, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Satyajit Ray) ably fills out the bonus discs in that ideal Criterion Collection of the mind, with everything from James Wong Howe's reminiscence of fights with the Technicolor lab over low-light photography to Fritz Lang's idiosyncratically sweet take on Deep Throat as 'a crime against youth' (young people should discover oral sex with each other, he persuasively argues, rather than 'see it for the first time in a motion picture and say, "Oh, let's try that"')."

The Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos is "beautifully designed" and the first book devoted to the work of "the Michelangelo of the Macabre," writes Tim Lucas.

Having read The Film Snob's Dictionary, "a smart, funny, opinionated take on movie mania," Vince Keenan offers a review and an online listening tip.

Alistair Macaulay on Olivier: "Fortunately for us, [Terry] Coleman admires his subject and doesn’t need to deify him." Also in the Times Literary Supplement (and only somewhat film-related, but the weekend's just around the corner, so here you go), David Schiff on Robin Maconie's Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Richard Calvocoressi on Margarita Cappock's Francis Bacon's Studio, Hal Jensen on John Fowles's The Journals, Volume Two and David Coward on Daniel Karlin's Proust's English.

Kim Ki-duk, a new monograph in French and English.

Catherine Taft finds the party celebrating the publication of Broken Screen: Expanding the Image, Breaking the Narrative and files an entry in Artforum's diary.

Michael Palin's Himalaya is to become required reading in British schools, the AP reports.

Updates, 3/31: In the Telegraph, Hugh Davies tells some of the hottest stories from Lee Server's Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing.

Online browsing tip. "Photographs by the well known (David McCabe, Cecil Beaton, Weegee, Warhol himself) and unknown, along with short texts, track the evolution of Andy Warhola, Pittsburgh art student, into Andy Warhol, world-famous icon." Mary Panzer introduces a selection from Andy Warhol "Giant" Size at Vanity Fair.

Online listening tip. Phillip Lopate will be a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show today (if you miss it, you can download the podcast later).

Posted by dwhudson at March 30, 2006 2:06 PM